Abigail's Party: so, who fancies another cheesy-pineapple one?

Abigail's Party is still going on, 32 years after it was first shown on BBC's Play for Today. But why is this tale of 70s suburbia still so popular? Here
Mike Leigh discusses the enduring appeal of his play, while
Imogen Carter talks to leading lady Alison Steadman, along with actors, writers and directors who saw the show in 1977… and have never been able to forget it

Of course I recognise the enduring popularity of Abigail's Party. It still hits a nerve about the way we live. It's real even though it's apparently a heightened and comic play. It's a reflection of the realities of how we live on a several different levels. It's about aspirationalism and materialism, love and relationships. Like much of my work, it's about the disease I call "the done thing" – basically, keeping up with the Joneses. It's actually quite a complex play. People may not analyse its complexity but it's so popular precisely for that reason.

I feel fine about it being my most famous work in this country because it's nice to have a work that's so popular, and at the time it brought my film-making to the wider public. On the other hand I do feel I've done better and more profound pieces of work, be it Naked, Vera Drake or Secrets & Lies. I must always make a distinction between the original Hampstead Theatre play, which I was very pleased with, and the later television version, which is still the play but with some compromises made for the BBC. It is a mess technically.

I appreciate it when people say it has influenced them. The evidence is that its influence is ongoing though: I know through the grapevine that young people watch it all the time and continue to get it. People don't particularly see it as a period piece although, 32 years after it was broadcast on the BBC, it is a period piece.

Mike Leigh was talking to Amy Raphael

Alison Steadman

Actress

'It gradually dawned on us that we'd done something special'

We had a tremendous amount of fun creating Abigail's Party but we had no idea how popular it would be. I loved getting my character together, coming home and rummaging around for a costume, doing research at the make-up counters in Selfridges. I found the first improvisation quite easy, whereas you often feel awkward at the start, and I remember thinking, "I've got something here." I think it dawned on us gradually that we'd done something a bit special. Thinking about it now still makes me laugh. I even got an Evening Standard award, which was very exciting.

We filmed it over four days in the studio, and on the last night the chief cameraman came over to me, shook my hand and said, "Thank you very much, Alison. I've loved this show, I've loved watching your performance." I've never forgotten that. Cameramen back then never talked like that to actors.

As the years have gone by, the impact has been extraordinary. I once did a series with Jennifer Saunders, and at the wrap party she said: "Do you realise what an influence you were on me and loads of other people?" And I had no idea. Thirty- two years after it went out, people still approach me, particularly young people, and say, "Oh wow, I've just seen Abigail's Party" or "I'm studying it for A-level."

I recently went for a coffee on Hampstead Heath and the lady sitting next to me said, "Oh my God you're Alison Steadman." She was in her mid-thirties, very bubbly, and she said, "Me and my friends have Abigail's Parties all the time, all girls, we get all the drinks in, we read it and we have a laugh, it's a smashing night. Beverly of course is the favourite part to play but we're fair and we swap around." I was amazed. I'd heard of gay men doing that but not women.

The first few years after it went out I kept wishing people would stop talking about it. Nothing would wipe away Beverly. I got so many offers of parts which were basically Beverly with knobs on. But I didn't want to cheapen it, I was so proud of that piece of work. I'm playing Pam in Gavin and Stacey now, and people say "Oooh she's a little bit Beverly." But there isn't a trace of her actual character in Pam, people just say that because she's from Essex and they hear me doing the accent. If anything has seemed "a bit Beverly", it's pure coincidence, or because there are only so many things I can do as an actress!

Tony Jordan screenwriter and producer

'I've been to parties like that. I've met Beverly 100 times'

No one's even come close to critiquing the class system as well as Mike Leigh in Abigail's Party. We all tried to. I like to think that I did in little snatches with shows like EastEnders.

I must've been 20 when it was on TV. I was coming out of adolescence, my spots were going, and I'd just bought my first place. I was starting to wonder how I was going to fit in, worrying about social niceties, so it was like a horror film for me.

It's all about the middle-class system: Susan is upper-middle-class, Beverly and Laurence are the real middle class, and then Tony and Angela are the lower middle, they're desperately trying to fit in. But you can see their faces, they're thinking: "Shit, is this really what we've been aspiring to?"

The characterisation is so clever that everybody I know who's middle-class I can put into one of those camps. I've been to some of those parties, I've met Beverly and every other character a hundred times. For the past 30 years I've been dying for one of them to say to me: "Tone, do you want a little cheesy pineapple?"

Abigail's Party has absolutely informed what I do as a writer. Whenever I approach character it pops into my head because of the standard of characterisation. It's clearly influenced TV generally too. If you look at the sitcoms that followed: Ever Decreasing Circles, Absolutely Fabulous, even the awkwardness of Basil Fawlty [in Fawlty Towers] whenever he came into contact with anybody in authority. All those shows tap into the same thing, us aspiring to better ourselves, to be part of a fictitious elite. People have more today but I think we're just the same as back then. I go to dinner parties now where they've got square plates, and instead of just giving you your dinner, it's piled in a three-foot tower.

It's also a really simple story. Yes, someone dies – but aliens don't land on the back lawn, Abigail isn't raped, murdered and left in the wheelie bin. The basic conflict is that Beverly's into Demis Roussos and kitsch erotica paintings, and Laurence is into Beethoven, Van Gogh and Lowry. Sometimes it's good to be reminded of that as a writer, that you don't have to have helicopters and explosions if your characters are interesting enough. I always use Abigail's Party as a reference point when I've got people round the story table getting carried away.

Julia Davis

Comedy writer and performer

'I'd never seen a strong female character leading a piece'

It's taken me three series of working on Gavin and Stacey to not be totally in awe of Alison Steadman. She's absolutely lovely but I've watched Abigail's Party so many times and I just couldn't stop thinking, "It's her from Abigail's Party." She's had such an influence on me.

I was in my 20s when I first saw it. I'd seen strong female characters like Margot in The Good Life but I think it was the first time I'd seen a woman leading a whole piece and being hilariously funny. Before then female roles on TV seemed to be either posh women in comedies or kitchen-sink characters, whereas Beverly was an aspirational suburban character who Alison clearly loved playing. Because it's improvised it's much more layered than scripted comedy, it's got that overlapping feel of real conversation.

When someone pointed out that Nighty Night seemed influenced by Abigail's Party I felt almost bad – it wasn't conscious. Beverly's not as hideous as Jill in Nighty Night but she's relentless and domineering. Moments like when she tells Ang how to put her lipstick on, that cruelty, that sense of one woman being overbearing to another, that's definitely my sense of humour. Then there's the physical look of the play, the size of Beverly against her husband, the fact Ang is really small. I love all the characters and I'm endlessly fascinated by the dynamics between couples generally. I'd happily watch it again and again.

Richard Eyre,

TV, film and theatre director

'In another 25 years, people will still find it funny and true'

Abigail's Party has certainly become a classic because it transcends its period and its social milieu. I first saw it at Hampstead Theatre and I thought it was incredibly funny. It seemed a kind of emblem of, and a satire on, the Thatcherite aspiration that would late sweep the country. I think it's had an influence on TV comedy since by licensing an extreme kind of social satire. I can imagine it being revived in another 25 years and people still finding it funny and true.

Arabella Weir

Comedian, actress and author

'I remember thinking: I'm seeing something really original'

As Beverly, Alison Steadman blazed a trail for character comedy. Anybody playing a character in a sketch show or a series like The Office owes something to her. It's hard for people to understand today, but back when Abigail's Party came out we just didn't have character comedy like we do now. There were no David Brents.

Alison created a pretty extreme character with a very distinct physicality and made her believable, which is what we went on to do with The Fast Show. To me her performance is in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. She made these brave, bold moves that could've backfired terribly and made you think, "what is she doing? What's with the stupid shoulders and that silly voice?" Obviously everyone in the show is absolutely brilliant, otherwise Beverly would have been an embarrassing caricature. But when you're sharing the limelight with a David Brent or a Beverly, how do you get a look in?

I was at drama school when I first saw it on TV and I remember thinking, "blimey, I'm seeing something really original", but I didn't know it would inform my career as much as it did. We did Abigail's Party at drama school for the rest of time, everybody did, we couldn't get enough of lines like "do you like a little bit of Demis Roussos?"

That provincial, aspirational bourgeoisie depicted in Abigail's Party was very recognisable at the time. And yet you could probably nail our class system today by doing almost exactly the same production with different ways of denoting naffness. Whereas my generation thought posh was about how many books you'd read, these days people think rich equals posh. If you've got an enormous 4x4, a Louis Vuitton handbag and a facelift, you're posh. The Beckhams would probably be the King and Queen of Abigail's Party's world today.

Simon Stephens

Playwright

'It's almost like TV's Waiting for Godot. It affected everything'

Alison Steadman's Beverly is the defining performance of 70s drama, but when I think about the play it's Tony and Sue that stick in my mind. John Salthouse gives a terrific performance as Tony with his brooding violence. The way Harriet Reynolds as Sue accesses fear and manages to remain comical is extraordinary. I guess as a dramatist I'm interested in the stillness and latent nature of violence, and I think Tony and Sue released that with real force.

The world of Abigail's Party was the backdrop to my childhood. I have distinct memories of my parents having friends around for drinks parties. Us Brits are such an alcoholic nation, and I think Mike Leigh cuts to the quick of that in Abigail's Party. The sheer volume of alcohol they all drink is incredible.

It's one of those plays that's so all-pervasive, it's hard to identify specific influences it's had. It's almost like television's Waiting for Godot, it affected everything. Every play written since Waiting for Godot was inspired by it, and to an extent what Mike Leigh did for the televisual form was similarly influential. The way he looked at character so forensically; his ability to access horror, tragedy and fear under the guise of comedy; and then releasing those big Greek themes in a suburban setting. Seeing that as an aspiring stage- and screenwriter at university in my 20s was incredibly inspirational. I'd love to be able to write something like Abigail's Party today and not have a script editor pester me about it having an apparent absence of action.

David Aukin

head of drama at production company Mentorn

'As long as there is theatre, people will go on performing it'

Abigail's Party must be one of the most watched dramas on television ever but it only got on television because something else collapsed and there was a hole in the schedule. It was such a cheapy for the BBC too: it's almost exactly the Hampstead Theatre production, even the same set. Yet it's influenced a whole generation of comedy writers and performers.

Michael Rudman and I were running Hampstead Theatre at the time [Aukin was executive director] and we approached Mike Leigh about doing a show there. I think he very much took on board the venue in deciding what sort of play he wanted to do; the north London location, the very small space.

It's a classic. It's about mothers and children; husbands and wives. Our externals may change but the internal dynamics of our relationships remain the same for ever. As long as there is theatre, people will go on performing it. Like all classics it has a truth about it which will survive for all time.

Melvyn Bragg

Author and broadcaster

'Alison Steadman managed to hit a national nerve'

There was something unmistakably fresh about Abigail's Party when it opened at Hampstead Theatre. It seemed to be part of a surge which goes all the way from improvisation to Alan Ayckbourn. It also has a seriously great central performance by Alison Steadman. She managed to create not only a character but a slice of society, maybe even a slice of English life going back a few centuries. She hit a real national nerve.

Create your own Abigail's Party, with Euan Ferguson

The cast Some have been known to love Abigail's Party so much that they attempt to recreate the whole play, right down to the nuts and the nibbles. It's a task made increasingly hard by the passage of time and hugely changing social circumstances, not least of which is finding five friends who smoke.

Music The play is not so much about people with "bad taste"; it's about tension between couples who share their lives but can never share a smidgeon of taste, and the power and compromise involved. So the battle between Beverly and Laurence is nominally over Demis Roussos vs the "light classical" of James Galway, and both could easily be found to play on iTunes, but a literal recreation wouldn't work: they have had their day. Perhaps the nearest you would get to that musical tension today would be between Susan Boyle's forthcoming Christmas album and Pachelbel's Canon: but, crucially, both being advocated withoutirony.

Food etc The "cheesy-pineapply ones" are beyond simple, as are peanuts, and the drinks are straightforward. The tricky bit is the olives, used early on in the play to establish Laurence's European pretensions and Beverly's penile fixation. Today it's hard to find the ones in the play, so used are we to "posh" olives; I suppose you could de-posh them by removing them from the balsamic-marjoram liquor, steeping them in Sarson's and filling them with sweet chopped tongues of pimento pepper – or perhaps you can still buy those 70s ones if you live near (and if there is such a thing as) an "upmarket Spar".

The painting Despite the rest of Laurence's hideously parvenu tastes, in their own way worse than Beverly's honest tawdry schlock, he does love his art, and talks with true knowledge about Van Gogh. Hence the cataclysmic battle over Beverly's taste, which can be reproduced today: Wings of Love, by Stephen Pearson, which has sold more than three million prints, is still available online for £23.99.

Walls/carpets/furnishings Hard. You'd need to visit, often, for a year, charity shops. Or you could do the same amount of damage to your resale price with a simple wrecking-ball.